Senate Passes Cyber Security Bill

The Senate passed a bill Wednesday that will give the Department of Homeland Security a standalone cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency and elevate the importance of the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), giving it more freedom to make changes within the organization without significant oversight, The Hill reports.

The House passed the bill in 2017 and lawmakers in both chambers have been urging the Senate to act on the legislation.

"NPPD is not named or organized in a way that allows us to confront the threats of today, and it's time for a change," DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in September at an election security conference in St. Louis. "Not only would this rebrand what is arguably one of the hardest agency names currently to remember, it would also realign its structure to reflect the core cybersecurity and infrastructure resilience mission it exercises."

The bill's aim is to "foster stronger public-private partnerships to better address cyber risks that could jeopardize America's national security and economic prosperity."

The legislation will rebrand the NPPD as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency and split the department into three components: emergency communications, infrastructure security, and cybersecurity.

A year after the House passed its own cybersecurity bill, the Senate created a standalone agency within the Department of Homeland Security called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency.